As we count down to Milan next week, we take a quick look back at the key themes and Dezeen's projects from the last three years at the design world's most important festival.

2012: hacking

At Milan 2012, hacking, open design and the 3D printing revolution were the hot topics, with key shows including the Hacked Lab staging performances, installations and workshops at La Rinascente department store and The Future in the Making curated by Domus exhibiting cutting-edge examples of open design and digital manufacture.

Dezeen drew these themes together and set the agenda with a series of daily broadcasts from Dezeen Studio at MOST, which also included interviews with Zaha Hadid on her forthcoming projects, Joseph Grima on open-source production and Justin McGuirk on the future of design criticism.

2011: #milanuncut

At Milan 2011 the #milanuncut project set out to lift the lid on the furniture industry's royalty system, starting with a debate on Twitter between journalists including Kieran Long, Max Fraser, Justin McGuirk, Julie Taraska and Dezeen's Marcus Fairs, and quickly escalating to become the hot story of Milan.

Also that year, we launched our movie-making studio in the Ventura Lambrate district and collaborated with Yves Behar on an experimental audio installation that sewed the seeds for Dezeen Music Project.

2010: the volcano

At Milan 2010 the design on show was completely overshadowed by the volcanic eruption in Iceland that filled European airspace with ash, leaving half the design world stranded in Milan and the other half unable to get there.

There was nothing for it but to settle into our week-long DezeenBarBasso party and ride it out - you can watch a movie we made about the legendary hang-out here and we hope to catch you there again next week!

This year we'll be bringing the Dezeen and MINI World Tour to Milan - stay tuned for more details and see all our previews of Milan 2013 in the meantime.